There are two principal sorts of boats in common use today for which a boat arranged according to my invention is a competitive replacement combining many of the virtues of each. One sort is exemplified by the well-known "Windsurfer.RTM." in which the sail is mounted on the hull by a universal joint and the sail is extended by a wishbone boom. The operator stands on top of the hull and controls the balance, speed, and direction of the boat by manipulating the angle of the mast to the hull and the alignment of the wishbone by his hands. An outrigger variant of this sort of boat is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,900. The other sort generally has a shallow, decked-over hull (referred to in the trade as a "board boat") rigged with a fixed mast, a spar-supported sail conventionally sheeted, and steered from a position abaft the mast, and on which the sailor moves under the boom, aft of the mast, when tacking.
Two interesting variants were considered during the preparation of this application. One variant is U.S. Pat. No. 3,902,442 which discloses a sailboat having two rudders, one at each opposite end A and B, that is worked to windward not by coming about but by reversing the direction of motion from A end first to B end first by manipulation of the sails and stays. The rudder at the end that is the "stern" from time to time affords the steering; the rudder at the other end is locked to provide a sort of centerboard. The other variant is U.S. Pat. No. 3,931,779. It shows a sport cat boat with a conventional rudder aft controlled by a tiller turning in a horizontal plane about a vertical pivot in the foredeck. A second rudder is provided connected to the after end of the mainsail boom. Various arrangements are shown for controlling this novel auxiliary rudder to make the boom-to-keel-line angle automatically variable in response to wind pressure. A conventional trapeze and harness abaft the mast is shown.